Users identify ambient awareness as Twitter’s most valued benefit

Evidence

Participants told me that Twitter enabled them to stay in touch with faraway friends and deepened relational bonds with people they knew in person. Individual items from the lifestream, such as what music someone is listening to or where they are eating, probably have little or no intrinsic value to the audience. But each tidbit aggregates with other pieces of personal information to form a larger picture and reinforce a social bond. This experience was almost unanimously echoed by informants and was the most frequently cited benefit of Twitter. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 563

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Deep Listening material on phatic/relational communication and to research on social capital where weak ties and bonding are distinguished. — connects to: Heavy Twitter monitoring made relationships feel like strategic performance while fueling anxiety. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 601; Trivial social media posts create emotional intimacy through ambient awareness — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 562